


How The Prospect Of Kissing Captain Jack Harkness Can Alter The Laws Of Death

by filzmonster



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Of course it's a freaking fix-it, Post: Children Of The Earth, The Doctor is briefly mentioned, i totally blame SparksSeer for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 03:07:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11454693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/filzmonster/pseuds/filzmonster
Summary: Ianto Jones comes back from the dead by sheer power of will and Welsh stubbornness. How could Jack argue with that?





	How The Prospect Of Kissing Captain Jack Harkness Can Alter The Laws Of Death

**Author's Note:**

> If this is going to be the fix-it I'm remembered for, I'll be really pissed.

The smell of coffee hits Jack like a spaceship going 250 mph.

At first he thinks he's just imagining it, his tired and grieving mind trying to give him some short moment of happiness. So he closes his eyes and chokes back the tears and breathes and breathes and _breathes_ , but the smell lingers and if Jack has learned one thing while travelling with the Doctor and working for Torchwood, it's that he is still stupid enough to believe in miracles.

He opens the door to the kitchen, his too small kitchen in his too small apartment in this too small city on this too small _planet_ and why can't he just leave? – he opens the door to the kitchen and there he stands. Not in his suit, because that would have been too ridiculous, but in jeans and a t-shirt, and he looks so _young_. God, he looks so young and how could Jack have forgotten that? How could he have let him die this young?

"Ianto", he says, chokes on that name in his throat, on his tongue, on his lips.

Ianto smiles and waves, a cup of coffee in his other hand. There's still a scratch on his cheek, but it looks faded, almost healed, and that's weird because it never actually had the chance to do so.

"Hey, Jack", he says, calm as ever, and hands over the coffee. Jack is too surprised to say anything else or do anything more, so he just grabs the cup and cradles it in his hand.

The smell is killing him.

"What – what are you doing here?", he manages to say, his voice still shaking and his whole body trembling.

"Well, I'm making coffee, obviously", Ianto answers, and there's this familiar glint in his eyes, and _those eyes_. Jack has forgotten how beautiful they are when they are alive.

"I can see that", he barks, mainly because he doesn't know what else to do, what else to feel, his emotions are all over the place, and he is sorry, so sorry for snapping at Ianto like that.

Ianto, however, doesn't seem to mind. "And I am obviously here for you."

Jack just stares. He clings to the coffee in his hand like it's an anchor. The only thing that keeps him from drowning in all this grief and guilt and sorrow. "But – how?"

 _Does it matter?_ a small voice in his mind asks, because does it, really?

Maybe it does, because maybe he is dreaming this and maybe if Ianto can't explain why he is back it just proves the dream-theory and Jack will wake up and the coffee and Ianto will be gone and he doesn't know how to keep living after that, he doesn't know how to not drown when he's awake.

"Well", Ianto starts, then pauses and seems to think. "I guess, I just – wasn't ready to – never do it again."

Jack blinks. "Do what?"

At this, Ianto cracks a smile. His trademark grin. The one Jack rarely gets to see.

"Kiss you. I wasn't ready to never kiss you again."

It's too much. So Jack just takes a long, anticipated gulp of coffee.

"What, exactly, are you telling me here?", he keeps asking. He thinks if he stops asking, it'll all just disappear.

Ianto sighs patiently. "I'm telling you that I came back because it meant kissing you again."

"So you – what? Just – got out of your coffin and came back to – kiss me?"

It sounds ridiculous, even in his own head, even more so when he says it out loud, but Ianto simply nods.

"Yes. I mean. Have you ever kissed yourself? It's _bloody brilliant_ ", he says dreamy, and his expression turns into something soft and mellow, and, Oh God, he is so _beautiful_.

"And to make me stop doing that? Over my cold, dead body."

It's a _joke_. He jokes. He died and then he came back, and he _jokes_.

And Jack thinks: if God is real, if this miracle is real, if this is my reality and not a grief-induced dream – please, please, please let this be real. Give me this second chance.

He waits, for an answer, a cosmic sign, but nothing happens, and Ianto keeps standing there, in his kitchen, his eyebrows raised in mock-timidness.

And Jack makes a choice he has made a billion times before: screw it.

"Then why don't you do it?", he suggests, opting for his trademark grin, even though he's crying by now.

Ianto doesn't need to be told twice.

And these lips are real. This mouth is real. This body against Jack's body is _real_ and Ianto Jones came back from the dead just to kiss him. And if that means that Ianto Jones came back from the _fucking dead_ by sheer power of will and Welsh stubbornness, _then so be it_.

Later, much later, when they are lying in his too small bed, wrapped in his too small blanket, Jack cradles him close, makes sure that every inch of his body relishes in the familiar feeling of being next to Ianto Jones.

"You didn't really come back from the dead just to kiss me, did you?", he finally asks. It took him a lot to convince him that this is not a dream. It took a lot to make him not scared of questioning this miracle.

Ianto chuckles deep in his throat, his voice a soft wisp against Jack's neck.

"Of course not", he laughs. "I woke up in the TARDIS a few hours ago."

And Jack thinks: maybe miracles don't exist. Maybe Gods don't. But second chances do. And the Doctor has never stopped surprising Jack with granting him those.


End file.
